ABSTRACT
One theory, above all others, has provided a framework for much of the discussion of the striking demographic changes that have occurred in the last century. This is the so-called ‘Demographic Transition Theory’ and there has been considerable debate concerning whether post-war British society, indeed Western society as a whole, continues to be interpretable within terms of that theory’s key premises (Davis et al. 1987). In its essentials, Demographic Transition Theory is a type of dogma of the ‘irreversible sequential change’ variety. It is an evolutionary schema setting out the demographic stages through which societies are bound to move as a consequence of industrialisation and urbanisation (Woods 1982:158-84). The initial condition in which high mortality and high fertility coexisted is stage I, and some have suggested in the English case that this ended c. 1750. This was followed by a phase of falling mortality in association with high fertility, creating rapid demographic growth (Stage II) until c. 1870; and after this there was a compensatory fall in fertility in Stage III which culminated when stationary demographic conditions were established in which very low mortality and fertility coincided simultaneously, especially after c. 1966. Much empirical research has shown that this model provides a problematic basis for our understanding of British demographic history in the period prior to 1900. Stage I in England cannot accurately be described as one in which high fertility and mortality coexisted in a compensatory fashion; nor can the great surge of population growth after 1750 be accurately explained by a fall in mortality (Wrigley and Schofield 1981). Nineteenth-century changes do not seem readily depicted as fertility falls occurring in the wake of prior mortality declines (Woods 1992). These matters cannot be the subject of discussion in this chapter as our purpose is to assess whether the last forty or fortyfive years can be seen as the culmination of this stadial model. Do they represent the triumphant establishment of Stage III or should this Whiggish device be jettisoned and replaced by an attempt to conceptualise a posttransitional demographic regime of low birth rates (of the kind associated with below replacement rate fertility), low mortality, population ageing,
stationary or negative demographic growth? The figures relating to total population numbers in the United Kingdom seem, at least superficially, to be consistent with such a view. Contrary to the predictions of Transition Theory, population grew quite rapidly in the decades immediately following the Second World War. The United Kingdom contained 50.3 million people in 1951 (compared with 46 million in 1931) and growth thereafter took that figure to almost 56 million in 1971. The last two decades, however, have witnessed much slower demographic expansion and the population estimated for 1991 is only c. 57.3 million, of whom almost 21 per cent are over 60 years (Laslett 1989:69).
